The MLB playoff format has many yelling at the clouds with some of the top teams in the league being eliminated. The regular season is a different ballgame (pun intended) from the postseason, however.
Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander, who has seen his fair share of postseasons, said living in the present is what’s important and what happened before October is in the rearview mirror.
“Regular season doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Verlander told media Saturday during the team’s workout day. “And I think it’s a different game, playoffs is a different brand of baseball. I think just when you put every guy on the roster together and have this mentality of do everything you can, every single play to try to win a baseball game.”
The Astros won 90 games during the regular season and are still alive. Meanwhile, the Braves (104 wins), Orioles (101 wins), Dodgers (100 wins) and Rays (99 wins) all have been eliminated.
With that said, the rest factor has come into play, because let’s face it, the hottest team in the game during the perfect time will be the one on the World Series stage. So, if a wild-card team is on a good run and the teams who have a layoff are getting byes because they were good in the regular season grow cold, things can shift dramatically.
“I don’t think we have any special recipe that anybody doesn’t. It’s difficult with days off. I think we embrace that,” Verlander said. “Everybody knows it and has just tried to find their own — I think that’s the thing going to the ALCS as many times in a row as we have, you definitely have times where you have days off. You are going to have four or five days off in a row, it just happens.”
Braves starter Spencer Strider said there are no excuses for the team’s elimination by the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS.
“The people trying to use the playoff format to make an excuse for the results they don’t like are not confronting the real issue,” Strider said following the Braves’ NLDS elimination. “You’re in control of your focus, your competitiveness, your energy. If having five days means you can’t make the adjustment, you have nobody to blame but yourself.”
Verlander also said there are no excuses.
“So each individual guy has learned their routine of how to deal with the downtime to allow them to be what they need to be physically, mentally, to go out there and succeed,” he said.
